In the field of psychotherapy, both in individual or group settings, the ease with which the patient expresses her emotions is of great importance. If the patient has difficulty in expressing her current and past emotions, whether due to the her reluctance to express these emotions or due to a physical or psychological handicap in doing so, diagnostic and therapeutic progress will be quite slow. In addition, if the medium of expression itself presents barriers to the patient in communicating emotions, the patient's expressions may be misinterpreted by the therapist, resulting in misdiagnosis or less effective treatment. Accordingly, many therapists utilize psychotherapeutic tools to improve their patients' ability to accurately convey their emotions.
By way of background, U.S. Pat. No. 4,762,494, issued to Woods, discloses a doll useful in the psychotherapy of children. The doll has a face with expressionless eyes and a nose, and with VELCRO patches located above and below the eyes, at the location of the mouth, near the heart, and elsewhere, at which the patient may attach specific emotional indicia, such as tears, eyebrows, a smile or frown, a cloud, a color patch, and a solid or broken heart, according to the emotions felt by the patient. The doll also includes arms with VELCRO patches on the hands, permitting a hugging or embracing configuration (see column 5, lines 63 through 66). The Woods reference further discloses that the doll may be used to communicate present or past mental states (see column 5, line 25).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,927, issued to Newman, also discloses a doll useful in the child psychotherapy and child care contexts. This doll has a hood overlapping the face area of the doll's head, into which a circular facial panel may be inserted and retained; the facial panels have four specific facial expressions (happy, sad, angry, afraid), allowing the patient to express their thoughts and feelings by selecting the appropriate face. This reference discloses that the dolls are preferably gender specific (boy dolls for boys, girl dolls for girls). The reference further discloses that the doll may be used by an adult to communicate positive reinforcement to the child (see column 3, lines 38 through 44).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,607, issued Apr. 17, 1990 to Van Hoose, discloses a doll for facilitating communication of emotions in a therapy context. This doll has a face and other ornamentation, and further includes cavities for receiving fabric forms indicative of human feelings, as well as forms representing body parts and attributes. Placement of the various forms into the cavities is disclosed as effecting communication from patient to therapist.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,373,292, issued Feb. 15, 1983 to Pelura, discloses a doll having dual faces indicative of various predetermined roles, such as doctor/nurse, mother/father, boy/girl, etc., and which can be connected together in a role playing context.
Each of these prior psychotherapeutic tools include representational features (such as presenting gender and age information), as well as decorative features. Accordingly, these dolls will tend to bias the patient's expression of emotions in a therapy situation, limiting his ability to express particular emotions. In addition, these prior tools are limited in their expression of hidden emotions or states, as each are capable of a single expression at a particular time. Furthermore, no provision is provided in these dolls for presenting any sort of time-dependent information regarding the patient's emotional history.
By way of further background in the field of toys, U.S. Pat. No. 5,044,959, issued to Shaver et. al., discloses a stuffed animal or doll having a frontal opening into which a child patient may place objects indicative of their emotions and their intensity, and having an openable rear plate through which the therapist can view the objects placed into the figure by the patient. The objects include face disks with varied expressions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,834, issued to Rush, discloses a backpack for a doll, such as a stuffed bear. The backpack may fold down to serve as a cape.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,027,457, issued to Sweet, discloses a pillow having extended arms which can wrap around a person's neck to hold onto the person while the person moves around. The Sweet reference discloses that VELCRO fasteners may be used on the mitts of the hands of this pillow.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,435,267, issued to Vathe, discloses a doll having disproportionately long (i.e., "grotesque") arms and legs.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,020,586, issued to Benner, discloses a doll having an envelope over the face area into which a photograph of the face of a child may be placed to personalize the doll.
U.S. Pat. No. D-275,693, issued to Gregory, discloses a doll having disproportionately long arms and VELCRO fasteners at the hand location. U.S. Pat. No. 3,789,547, issued to Chemarin, discloses the construction and use of VELCRO fasteners on a child's toy. Other references, namely U.S. Pat. No. D-279,727 (Mitchell), No. 4,296,567 (Kamar), and No. 4,540,378 (Cusimano), each disclose dolls and wraps having positionable arms.
By way of further background, a psychotherapy technique has been recently popularized in which the patient recalls and expresses emotions corresponding to various stages of their childhood and adolescence, i.e., the "inner child" or the "child within". While recently popularized, this psychotherapeutic concept has been known for many years. See, e.g., Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis. According to this approach, patients express, for example by acting out, emotions that they experienced at specific ages, in order to allow the adult patient to resolve anxieties that originated in childhood.
By way of further background, U.S. Pat. No. 4,341,521 discloses a psychotherapeutic device useful for child patients, and consisting of a role-playing book with various pages depicting dramatic schemes. The child expresses emotions by placing one of a series of puppets into the scene as a character, according to the child's belief as to the emotion felt by the character.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a psychotherapeutic tool in the form of a doll, which allows for a patient to express a wide range of emotions, attitudes, defensive processes and the like that correspond to her self-image at particular ages in her development, including the present, and in a manner that is independent of verbalization.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a tool that represents a particular "child within" or "inner child", and provide a tangible tool that enables a patient to be "in touch" with his "inner child-like self".
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a tool which has minimal representational bias, allowing the patient to freely express his emotional states.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a tool which allows for expression of a history of self-images.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a tool which allows for the use of multiple layered expressions to indicate outwardly apparent emotions that are masking true, inner emotions.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a tool which provides comfort to the patient during a therapy session.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having reference to the following specification together with the drawings.